Copy 1, Volume 1

Treatises on physiology and phrenology: from the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica / By P.M. Roget.

  • Peter Mark Roget
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Treatises on physiology and phrenology: from the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica / By P.M. Roget. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    terior ventricles, memory in the middle, and understanding in the posterior ventricles. Albertus Magnus, in the thir- teenth century, went so far as actually to delineate upon a head the supposed seat of the different faculties of the mind. He placed common sense in the forehead, or in the first ventricle of the brain, cogitation and judgment in the se- cond, memory and moving power in the third. Peter de Montagnana, in 1491, published the figure of a head, on which were indicated the seat of the sensus communis, the cellula imaginativa, cellula estimativa seu cogitativa, cel- lula memorativa, and cellula rationalis. Ludovico Dolci, Servito, and a great number of other writers, have hazard- ed similar hypotheses as to the locality of the different fa- culties. Both Haller and Van Swieten fancied that the in- ternal senses occupy different places in the brain ; but they considered its whole organization as too complicated, too intricate, and too difficult, to allow of any hope that the seat of memory, of judgment, or of imagination, could ever be detected. In the pursuit of this speculation, no one has engaged with more ardour and perseverance than Dr. Gall, who, after many years of patient labour, and much fruitless wan- dering in search of the truth, conceived that he had at last discovered the clue which was to conduct us through the mazes of this labyrinth, and enable us to arrive at a more accurate knowledge of human nature, and of the means which may conduce to its perfection. The account which he gave of the circumstances that gradually drew his atten- tion to the subject, and of his progress in this new path of discovery, is as follows: Brought up in the midst of a nu- merous family, and naturally gifted with the talent for ob- servation, he was struck, even when a boy, with the diver-
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